UN Talks While Congo Civilians Suffer

The UN Security Council meets today to discuss the situation in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the civilian population bears the brunt of the fighting between rebel groups including the FDLR, various Mai Mai militia, and the LRA and the Congolese army (FARDC) operating with the Rwandan and Ugandan armies. While joint operations were declared successful by the governments involved and the UN hailed the strides toward peace, the people of the region continue to suffer at the hands of all the combatants.

Human Rights Watch reports that the FLDR killed, raped, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians during and after the joint Congo-Rwanda military campaign in North Kivu earlier this year. Among the atrocities reported, the HRW report cites:

As Rwandan and Congolese coalition forces advanced toward the FDLR's former headquarters at Kibua, in Ufamandu, North Kivu, the FDLR abducted scores of local residents from neighboring villages and took them to their camp, apparently intending to use them as human shields against the impending attack. Witnesses said that when coalition forces attacked Kibua on January 27, the trapped civilians tried to flee. The FDLR hacked many civilians to death and others died in the crossfire.

One witness at Kibua saw FDLR combatants kill at least seven people, including a pregnant woman, whose womb was slit open. Another saw an FDLR combatant batter a 10-year-old girl to death against a brick wall.

The FDLR warned in a letter to the governor of South Kivu that civilians who supported the government forces would be considered combatants and slaughtered. The Congolese army announced after the withdrawal of Rwandan forces from North Kivu that the campaign would now turn to South Kivu.

"The FDLR have a very ugly past, but we haven't seen this level of violence in years," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. "We've documented many abuses by FDLR forces, but these are killings of ghastly proportions."

But the FDLR isn't the only group to commit atrocities. HRW said many rapes and assaults on civilians by Rwandan troops were reported by civilians fleeing the fighting as well.

The aid agency Oxfam, quotes UN figures that say that since mid-January, when Congolese and Rwandan troops attacked the FDLR, another 250,000 civilians have been newly displaced in the provinces of North and South Kivu. Rwandan troops withdrew from the DRC at the end of February, but the Congolese army continues to pursue the FDLR in South Kivu. Meanwhile, FDLR units have reoccupied the territories they fled during the joint campaign.

The situation in the north is no better, according to Oxfam. In Haut Uélé, the Ugandan rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army, has displaced nearly 200,000 people since December, in part out of retaliation for a Ugandan military offensive against the group. Ugandan troops withdrew last month, having accomplished little except to destroy the lives of thousands of Congolese.

Marcel Stoessel, Head of Oxfam in the DRC said:

"The war is far from over for ordinary Congolese. These terrible human tragedies are happening in remote areas far away from television cameras, but this does not make the suffering less real for those concerned.

“Homes and shops are being looted and ransacked, women and girls are being raped, and civilians are being forced to flee, many for the third or fourth time. We are helping them pick up the pieces by increasing our emergency work. It is tragic to see Congo’s civilians caught up in this awful violence yet again.”

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council meets today to talk about the situation. Last year, they promised an additional 3,000 troops to aid the 17,000 blue helmets already in the Congo protect the civilian population. Not only have none of those additional troops arrived, there have been no reports that they are even en route.

No one expects much from the additional troops anyway. The original Security Council mandate called for UN troops to protect UN relief operations and Congolese civilians, but their record has been dismal. Civilian casualties in the eastern provinces continue to mount and the epidemic of terror rape continues to destroy the lives of hundreds of women and their families.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Chicago Reader Calls For Self-Defense

My reader in Chicago raises a question I hear frequently when speaking to various groups about attacks on non-combatants in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's one that's often posed whenever civlians are preyed upon by thugs:

I can't understand why the people of the DRC don't fight back. Sure, the soldiers are well-armed, but from what I've read, the "militias" are untrained or minimally trained, very small, maybe 1,000 strong, and travel in "battallions" of 10-20 men, making them significantly outnumbered by their victims. I have a hard time believing that an entire refugee camp couldn't make homemade weapons, such as spears, to at least deter attacks. Soldiers might have second thoughts about raiding a village if they knew they would be resisted by a large number of angry people. My understanding is that flight and evasion are the only methods of self-defense employed by the people. I heard on NPR that the DRC may be the only place in the world where more fighting would actually be an improvement.

Here is my response:

You may have seen this story by now, but there was recently a report from Bangadi, a village where raiders from the Lords Resistance Army was chased away by citizen action much like you describe.

The tale is both encouraging and frightening. On the one hand, of course, we cheer on the underdogs who rose up to protect themselves against some truly vicious criminals, taking the law into their own hands in a part of the world where protection by the lawful authorities is non-existent. The flip side is that self-protection often leads to vigilantism or worse. Many of the "Mai-Mai" militias that are often identified as rebels actually began as self-protection forces but eventually morphed into criminal gangs. When there is no rule of law, violence often begets violence and nobody wins.

The Congolese army (FARDC) hasn't been an effective peace keeping force, which is the main reason 17,000 UN troops are in the country. But one of the great mysteries of the current situation in the eastern provinces is why UN forces often seem so reluctant (or unable) to intervene when civilians are threatened by armed groups. There have been numerous reported instances when civilian massacres occurred practically within sight of UN encampments but the blue helmets failed to act. There is no question that they are stretched thin, operating in difficult terrain, etc., but their performance record is dismal nonetheless.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

UN Takes New Stance in Congo

The United Nations seems to have made a substantial shift in operational goals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at least according to recent announcements made by Alan Doss, Special Representative of the Secretary General to the DRC. While there has been no official change in MONUC's mandate, the blue helmets have vowed to go beyond the protection of civilians and UN humanitarian operations and become more proactive in efforts to bring peace to the eastern provinces.

The biggest change is a pledge to support the FARDC, the Congolese army, in its drive to destroy the FDLR, the remnants of the Rwandan Hutu Interahamwe who have terrorized the region for over ten years. Doss says the UN hopes to help the Congolese maintain the pressure on the FDLR recently applied by the joint Congolese-Rwandan military action. While Operation Umoja Wetu (Our Unity) was anything but a definitive victory, it did disrupt FDLR operations and led to the repatriation of significant numbers of Rwandans. Doss says MONUC will provide support to the FARDC as it extends the campaign into South Kivu.

MONUC also pledged to help the Congolese hold territory taken from the FDLR, but recent reports from North Kivu indicate these promises are easier made than kept as FDLR units have moved back into Lubero, Walikale and Masisi, in North Kivu, where they clashed with the FARDC, according to MONUC spokesman Lt. Col Jean-Paul Dietrich. The refugee population continues to swell as the FDLR strikes back following the departure of the Rwandan armed forces last month. At least 8,000 people have been displaced in Lubero, 14,000 west of Musienene, and 17,500 in Kirumba in North Kivu. The UN promise to strike back in support of the FARDC has yet to be fulfilled.

The change in UN attitude is significant because it seems to say that the international body has chosen sides in the eternal conflict. Until now, MONUC has supposedly confined itself to supporting UN humanitarian operations and protecting the civilian population from all belligerents, including the FARDC. By now openly supporting the FARDC, the UN has apparently decided that Joseph Kabila's government--as flawed as it might be--is legitimate (and it is, having been elected in 2006). The UN stance says that the best way to end the strife is to help Kabila assert the DRC's right to protect its territory.


Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.